“We would love for ISRO to use our software” – Ramanan Subramani, Spoors

In the technology driven business environment today, India Inc. is deriving huge benefit from companies that are helping make their operations more efficient. These companies are not just assisting in maximising productivity for their client companies, but also better organisation into the system. Team Estrade spoke to Ramanan Subramani of Spoors. Following are the excerpts of our conversation with Ramanan.

Ramanan Subramani, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer – Spoors

Ramanan Subramani is the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, and the chief spokesperson for the company. He is a polymath and comes with 16-plus years of experience in both technology and marketing/ communications. He holds a bachelor’s in physics and a master’s in computer application. He also has a postgraduate diploma in Intellectual Property Rights, and holds a certificate on Design Thinking and Innovations (Distinction) from MIT Sloan. When he isn’t working, Ramanan works on snake rescues (he is an amateur herpetologist). He loves his robots, electronics and open source hardware.

Team Estrade: Tell us about Spoors? About your products and services?

Spoors: Spoors is a flexible, domain-agnostic, self-serviced, cloud-based solution that helps businesses maximize productivity using enterprise workflow and activity management. Spoors’ vision is to be a one-stop shop for enterprises aiming to build a futuristic, mobile workforce. Spoors services have scaled from monitoring solutions to holistic workflow management equipped enough to handle even complex tasks. The moment a client is onboarded, Spoors’ tool EFFORT (Effective Field Force Optimization Reporting Toolkit), with its nifty features, can enable productivity and improvement individually. It allows for rapid configuration, deployment, re-configuration, and re-deployment of forms and workflows on the fly.

Key Products and Services:

Services: An extremely agile self-service solution that fits any domain and can go live with the process in less than 30 minutes for any number of users. The flexibility of the product added to its domain-agnostic nature makes it a perfect fit for any process, any domain and any scale. The Solutions are offered in vernacular languages to enable usage across the world.

Product:EFFORT+ stands for Effective Field Force Optimization Reporting Toolkit. We call it a kit because it has many nifty features that enable productivity improvement individually the moment a client is onboarded. The solution allows for quick configuration of forms for field personnel to collect and assimilate data. The solution also works in an offline mode (without data connectivity) as field personnel often work in zones where there is no data connectivity.

“We intend to be present in 10+ countries and in almost all continents”

Team Estrade: What prompted you to start the company? What is your geographical range?

Spoors: The idea for the company came about when Ramakrishna ‘Ram’ Chiniarlapalla returned to India in 2005 after working in the US. He noticed the blatantly indifferent and lackadaisical attitude among vendors and service providers across sectors. This is when Ram realized there was a need to build a monitoring and reporting solution that would enable employers track the progress of their service personnel anywhere, anytime. The idea for the company slowly evolved over Ram’s multiple discussions with friends, and later, Spoors’ co-founder and CTO Tiru Rao Boka. Though the background work on the company began in July 2012, Spoors was formally registered in 2013. Vijay C joined the leadership as the company’s COO in 2014, while Ramanan Subramani joined as their Chief Sales and Marketing Officer (CSMO) by late 2016.

Eureka Moment – Ram moved to India couple of years before he started Spoors. He realized that the service providers like carpenters, plumbers etc. would commit to a time and would never arrive or would say they are stuck in traffic while they are performing duties elsewhere. Neither the company that sent these service agents, nor did Ram and other customers like him have any way of knowing the time of arrival or the location of these service personnel. That’s when Ram decided to build a monitoring and reporting solution that would enable customers/employers to monitor the progress of service personnel from anywhere anytime. The idea evolved over multiple discussions with friends and co-founder Tiru to its current versatile activity management avatar.

The Hyderabad-headquartered company has satellite presence in all Indian metros (no physical offices). Spoors currently consists of a 50-member workforce, and its clients include 120-plus national and international companies. Spoors has presence in Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, UAE, South Africa and Singapore.

Team Estrade: What is the size of the market you are currently competing in, both in India and the world?

Spoors: The market is a Trillion dollar market with more than 100 odd players operating in this space. Like all commodities quality does matter and hence a handful of them provide quality software and service like ours. Our share of the market today is quite small and the growth that the company has seen in the last 1 year promises a sizeable future. We intend to be present in 10+ countries and in almost all continents (with at least one country in each) in the next 2 years. Outside India we have seen many players who have been surviving due to lack of good competition.

Team Estrade: How do you see Spoors’ growth vis-à-vis growth of the industry?

Spoors: Growth for us is not just field service and we are not dependent on a single domain. So our growth is not dictated by a demand-supply problem. Our growth is slated from innovative application of our data collection software in spaces that are unchartered. We would love for ISRO to use our software to do simple audits and surveys in space in the future.

“Our USP is that we are an Enterprise DIY – The first of its kinds in the world, Domain Agnostic, and the best value for money option available today.”

Team Estrade: Who is your competition in this space? What do you have that your competition doesn’t have?

Spoors: We have many players who can be considered competition. But none of them (we have personally tested them) are flexible and suitable to address needs across domains like our solution does. Our strength is the shapeless, formless, flexibility that our software enjoys. It can be configured to suit any need in a couple of hours. Businesses don’t have much time to waste and are looking for productive, constructive, cost-efficient yet profitable options. Put all of that in one sentence it appears complex. But we make it easier and simple for our clients and intend to do so for the world!

Team Estrade: Purely in value terms, how are you differentiating yourself in the market from the local smaller companies?

Spoors: Our USP is that we are an Enterprise DIY – The first of its kinds in the world, Domain Agnostic, and the best value for money option available today. Our vernacular capabilities and other features are nothing but an icing on the cake. We offer 700+ features and future upgrades also at one price point for user bases of different magnitude. Other market players vary both in configuration and pricing. Recently we have also offered a SDK to extend our platform capabilities onto other mobile apps that our clients may have already deployed. We seek business continuity for our customers and our SDK offering is one such measure in our journey in listening to customers and making products that the markets demand.

Team Estrade: What is your marketing strategy? For each product segment.

Spoors: Conventional marketing strategies have been about content, community and commerce. In fact many of the larger software players have also created such communications approaches. Our positioning to the market will be in terms of listening to customers and helping them identify its latent needs. We would love to be business consultants to our clients rather than just sellers of software platforms. Our marketing is also geared toward the same. We don’t do carpet bombing communication to all and sundry. Our communications for outbound is more organic than paid for. Which in turn defines the qualitative leads that we generate. In effect we would love to create content outposts and help people discover latent needs that makes our software fit in seamlessly to their requirements. We also are slowly establishing thought leadership in certain arenas where we feel that the growth is certain. Our SDK offering is one such good example. IoT is another that we have had experiences from the past before the word become fashionable amidst technologists.

In essence we won’t be wasting money on unnecessary communications (read as noise). We believe in quality communications directed towards individuals who would see value in what we do. This in effect also cushions the hurt faced by many investors who see the companies they have invested in, burn cash on advertising and communication. B2B is a challenge and we are dealing with it intelligently.

“We currently have a client base of 120 enterprises and are present in six countries”

Team Estrade: Is the eco system in India ripe for companies like Spoors?

Spoors: India is a diverse countries with a lot of untapped potential in tier 2/ 3 cities, Spoors provides the ideal solution for companies with a large field force in managing their operations in remote locations.

Alongside the government also is becoming digital as we speak. Digitization of all processes is a must and not a nice to have anymore. With these in place we see tremendous potential both in urban and rural India alike.

Team Estrade: Tell us the latest about buyer/client sentiment in this space, in terms of the latest data with you.

Spoors: We currently have a client base of 120 enterprises and are present in six countries – South Africa, UAE, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Vietnam – other than India. We also plan to expand our focus to Middle East and Africa in the coming months.

The best highlight would be of the churn rate. Most of our customers have been with us since inception and are extremely happy with our software and support services. It is music to our ears when our clients tell us how much they love our people and software. They know many of us by names when they would not know many in their own organizations! It is a testament to the fact that we treat our customers like demigods and not just a transaction.

“While our Top line has grown several folds (almost 40x since 2013) our bottom line strategies are still work in progress.”

Team Estrade: Which product segment is the highest revenue earner for your company? Which product is the lowest ticket size? Which one is the highest ticket size?

Spoors: We have only one Flagship product for now – EFFORT+. This cloud based solution is both a low ticket and high revenue earner for us. Recently we introduced the SDK that promises to be a game changer in our space. But we have not started monetizing it as yet. We would initially monitor the traction from the soft launch and then position it basis feedback.

“Spoors’ vision is to be a one-stop shop for enterprises aiming to build a futuristic, mobile workforce.”

Team Estrade: How many clients have you serviced since inception? At what rate is this growing per quarter, per annum (Y-on-Y)?

Spoors: Spoors has a client list of 120 companies including national and international companies. Since our inception in 2013, our growth has been exponential. The last two years have been the biggest wins for us in terms of revenue. SaaS models typically do not enjoy success in short hauls. They have long gestation periods. While our Top line has grown several folds (almost 40x since 2013) our bottom line strategies are still work in progress. We are hoping to infuse some additional funds to expand our market presence outside India and also in strengthening the existing product with add-ons like BI and Visualizations on the platform.

Team Estrade: What is the biggest challenge faced currently by Spoors and your industry of operation?

Spoors: Regulating the vast market of enterprise workforce, particularly in large countries like India is a challenge. Getting large corporate clients like Reliance, Mahindra and L&T on board in India is possibly another. Generally in this space, growth is based on network and net worth. Bids and RFPs are far and few. Though we do undertake outreach programs, our biggest challenge has been that some of the competition has slipped past with some big wins only due to personal connects and not due to business value. We are hoping we will have a fair chance in the market and will flourish despite the odds. The markets outside India are quite promising and we are hopeful we will get a double digit revenue in 2017-2018. We are crazy and ambitious that way!

Team Estrade: Who are your investors? Are you a profitable company? Are you looking to raise funds in the near future?

Spoors: We are currently invested in by a few friends and family. We are also enjoying good growth year on year with revenues crossing half a million USD currently. The company is aiming at getting the revenues doubled if not tripled in 2017 along with market/geo expansion outside India. Space: Enterprise DIY is non-existent and we seek for Spoors to create a new revolution in this space.

Team Estrade: What is your vision for Spoors, for –

Near term future – over the rest of 2017

Long term, over the next 4 years or so

Spoors: Within a few years of setting shop in India, Spoors has established presence in Africa, Singapore, Europe and the rest of APAC (through MOUs and channel partners). Spoors now plans to expand its client base in these countries and overall, scale it up by 100%.

For 2017, Spoors plans to focus on brand building and communication strategies to attract investors and scale its tool, EFFORT, to the next level by building robust intelligence using data from clients. Spoors’ vision is to be a one-stop shop for enterprises aiming to build a futuristic, mobile workforce.